


The Colossus

by FlowCloud (Envy_The_Homunculus)



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Hallucinations, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, the inescapable unknown that is other people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 20:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20730524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Envy_The_Homunculus/pseuds/FlowCloud
Summary: Saihara Shuichi cannot forget the dead.





	The Colossus

**Author's Note:**

> this work is sort-of inspired by the poem The Colossus by Sylvia Plath: 
> 
> https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89119/the-colossus
> 
> i highly recommend it in its entirety, but here's the portion I find most applicable:
> 
> "I shall never get you put together entirely,  
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.  
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles  
Proceed from your great lips.  
It’s worse than a barnyard.
> 
> Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,  
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.  
Thirty years now I have labored  
To dredge the silt from your throat.  
I am none the wiser.
> 
> [...]
> 
> The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.  
My hours are married to shadow.  
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel  
On the blank stones of the landing."
> 
> hope you enjoy!

Saihara cannot get the lies out of his head, because he will never be able to find the truth behind them. It’s a mystery he cannot solve, and even if he has cast off the mantle of the Ultimate Detective with the end of the 53rd season of Danganronpa, he is still a product of his producers, and his mind compulsively grapples with any knots it perceives. It’s in his nature to ponder and fixate on any mystery he never found a conclusive answer to, and the mystery of Ouma Kokichi trumps any other in his (mostly fake) career.

From his chair (one of two pulled up to the small desk he keeps in his small apartment, the other mostly empty) Saihara casts a tired, frustrated look over the documents he’s scattered across the surface. He could afford a better place to live, he knows, perhaps not one equipped with just the bare essentials—

_‘Like the one you lived in back then, right?’_ a fake-cheerful voice points out from the seat beside him. _“What, can’t move on?”_ Saihara can hear the sickle-grin from the tone alone.

—but using the Danganronpa resources he won with the blood and the deaths of his friends at all leaves a horrible taste in his mouth, so living extravagantly off of them is out of the question in his mind. The idea that he’s profiting off their pain just like the producers and the audience had disgusted him... And going back to his original home was discarded easily as well. He had taken one look at his old room in his childhood home, covered in pictures of different characters from previous seasons of the TV show he had adored, had _worshiped_ and decided that, whoever Saihara Shuichi had been, he was dead, and that was probably for the better.

The documents taunt him where they lay as their subject once had. They are clearly well-read, filled with notes written in his own small, neat handwriting. The notes don’t mean anything though, only signifying Saihara’s attempts to replace actual deductions in this self-assigned case with the comforting illusion of progress brought about by physically writing down his thoughts, even if those thoughts were ultimately worthless in solving said case.

The actual content of the documents consists of script notes and character designs for the Ultimate Supreme Leader, to be included in the 53rd season of Danganronpa and to be played by timid high school student Ouma Kokichi. He was the antagonist of the season; they had wound his wires too tight and held their breath waiting for him to snap and turn his ruthless mind toward those around him. But Ouma had obviously figured out something about the people who had created them all and turned against them. The notes couldn’t help him, because they obviously contradicted their subject’s actions.

He had also watched the whole season from beginning to end, partly out of a sense of obligation. It was a tense day where he could hardly tear himself away from the screen, as he relived the slow attrition of their class again, this time from the perspective of an audience member getting cheap, superficial entertainment from the tragedy that unfolded on-screen.

The other reason he had watched it was in the hope that he could glean more information about Ouma’s plans and motives, but Ouma seemed to understand the nature of the game they were playing uncannily early, never letting any indication of his true thoughts show on camera. Though it was helpful to understand what exactly Ouma’s plan had been, from manipulating Gonta to fooling the mastermind and audience alike, Saihara had always understood the mechanics of Ouma’s plans. His actions seen from the outside did not lead to any new understanding for Saihara. Instead, they rattled in his head, refusing to leave or divulge their secrets, obstinate until the end and past it.

Part of the problem is that the Ouma he remembers—the fun, bewildering moments they shared—and the one he sees carry out ramshackle plots with a Shakespearean actor’s poise and duplicity are irreconcilable. Ouma showed so many sides of himself to them, to him specifically, and none of them feel authentically him—

_“Well of course not!”_ a voice croons in his ear, filled with doubly-fake indignation and mirth. It sounds so real, so present, so welcome, that his brain fills in the gaps, conjures the warmth of another body leaning close to him, breath tickling the side of his face. _“I would never make a mystery so easy for my beloved detective!”_

And though he had made a promise to himself to never acknowledge the voice that had manifested itself soon after Ouma himself had died, he cannot help but respond, partially out of frustration at its existence and partly because all other avenues of investigation had borne no fruit. He always did seem to break his promises, after all. 

“But you did, K—Ouma. You could have taken your coat under that hydraulic press and left no indication that you were alive. Kaito could have hidden it with him in the Exisal. But instead you had him leave it in the toilet of all places. Why?”

The mirth is still there but also an undercurrent of maybe-fake annoyance, perfectly replicated, which perhaps says something about Saihara and the true reasons for his fascination with Ouma Kokichi. _“Hmm… maybe I just got distracted, y’know? I did have a lot to think about, what with pressuring Momota into murdering me and writing that script for him to fumble through… it just slipped my mind! Oops!”_

“I don’t accept that. You would never allow such a glaring flaw in your plan when such an easy solution existed. You were—” Saihara paused, trying to collect himself. He shouldn’t argue with a ghost.

Ouma took the opening like he always had before. _“Oh? What was I doing then? Go ahead and say it for all the people watching at home!”_

Saihara clenched his fists against the fake-leather of his chair as he spoke. “You were leaving us a way out. Despite all your posturing, you weren’t sure whether Monokuma would invalidate the game even if you tricked him into making an incorrect ruling, and so you left that hole so we could find it and save ourselves. And—”

He noticed Ouma facing him directly from the corner of his eye, felt those eyes piercing him, seeing him fully as they always did. _“And what? Am I some sort of hero to you, for that? Don’t be ridiculous, Saihara. That’s only a theory you concocted from nothing but the belief in our better angels, which has betrayed you over and over. Maybe you just don’t want to accept reality, even after all this time…_

_“Here’s a countertheory for you, Saihara, since you’ve been made for debate and deduction and you just love it so much. Maybe Ouma Kokichi was a pathetic liar who could never trust someone until he was at death’s door and left with no other options, and even then, he was too incompetent to even execute his plan correctly.”_ A rictus grin spread across the counterfeit’s face, so reminiscent of the horrible faces Ouma had made at him before. _“He died alone, a failure, and no one cared. Well…maybe some fujoshis cared, but no one that mattered.”_

“No, I know that’s not true. He and Kaito got us closer to ending the game… and I… I cared.” Saihara kept his eyes focused on his desk. “I cared about him, I wanted to know him better. He just wouldn’t let me or anyone in.”

But that wasn’t exactly true. He could almost feel the thing that wasn’t Kokichi become even more smug as he thought. Because… That word written on Ouma’s whiteboard next to his picture—_trustworthy?_—had haunted him from the moment he first laid eyes on it. Maybe if he had tried just a bit harder, put a bit more effort into spending time with Ouma and listening to him, maybe he could have…

_“Could have what? Stopped him?”_ He feels small hands fall on his shoulders as the other bends down to speak into his left ear. He hadn’t noticed the apparition moving behind him, but then, he wouldn’t. _“Ooooh, what would you have done? Would you have swept him off his feet into your weak, spindly noodle arms? Right after Kaede died too… wow, you move fast, Saihara-chan! You two would have made a great team too! I’m sure you know that from those moments when you two worked together to fool the rest of the class into believing what you wanted them to… A part of you always liked that, riiight? Felt some kind of pleasure at it… maybe superiority?”_ A finger teases at his collarbone beneath his shirt. _“Some degree of control over them, over _something_? They trusted you so much, and you used that—for the greater good of course._

_“But then again, you have no idea how he really felt about you, at the end of things.”_ The touch recedes as that voice insinuates itself into his right ear now. _“Maybe he just wrote that word there to mess with you, to keep you running in circles of “he loves me, he loves me not” forever. You can’t discount that, you know. Maybe he was desperate not to be forgotten after he went under that press, and he left it scrawled there to torment you like it obviously has… you see how easy it is to concoct these elaborate theories?_

_“Which leads us back to the point you need to understand, the one you’ve been trying to tell yourself all this time.”_ The hands drag across his shoulders, caressing as they reach his neck. _“There’s no magic evidence here that will suddenly reveal the truth behind how Ouma Kokichi felt and why he acted as he did.”_

Tiny false fingers clamp down around his throat, slowly applying pressure and constricting and cutting off his airway in his mind. Saihara knows, he intellectually understands, that they aren’t real, they cannot hurt him, but he cannot help but begin to pant, the pace of his breathing picking up.

_“Please try and understand this point, _Shumai_. It's important."_ He can feel the illusion of purple eyes gazing down at him with a condescending pity, which he could imagine Kokichi feeling toward any of the victims of their Killing Game.

_"There is nothing for you to find anymore, and maybe there never was. All there is and all there ever will be for Ouma Kokichi… is a spot of nothing against a metal table and the remnants of a bad act and a failed plan. You’d do well to forget him, to stop leaning on this mystery you’ve contrived as an excuse to keep blaming yourself for what wasn’t your fault, to keep yourself immersed in the worst memories of your life and punish yourself.”_

Tears prick at Saihara’s eyes as he struggles to breathe, sobs spilling from his mouth and mind moving quickly between every piece of evidence he had collected, the paltry sum of his makeshift amends. Whatever it is that speaks to him—_it’s not Kokichi_—it has cut to the heart of things, the truth he had been unable to face, even after all this time and all the times he’s told himself he knows not to run from it. 

His character arc had been temporary after all.

Jerking, he wrenches out of the phantom grasp of his demons, violently standing with trembling limbs and sending his chair clattering to the floor. He twists around to look at the demon behind him, to confront it—

But there was nothing there to find. Just an empty apartment, devoid of answers or closure, filled only by a hollowed-out boy who couldn’t let go.

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah that was a lot. sorry!
> 
> i've been sitting on this thing for months, but i felt like it was time to post it. it's my first fanfic in something like four years, but i was so inspired by Kokichi and Shuichi's relationship that this just came to me.
> 
> there's a lot going on beneath the surface here, so feel free to comment any questions you have and i'd be happy to answer.
> 
> you can find me on twitter @lonon_delrey
> 
> please leave a comment or some kudos if you enjoyed! and thanks for reading!


End file.
